The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)
Friedrich Nietzsche
1,346 passages indexed from The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza) (Friedrich Nietzsche) — Page 15 of 27
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The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1029
_The Origin of the Learned once more._—To seek self-preservation merely, is the expression of a state of distress, or of limitation of the true, fundamental instinct of life, which aims at the _extension of power_, and with this in view often enough calls in question self-preservation and sacrifices it.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 580
The Will is to him a magically operating force; the belief in the Will as the cause of effects is the belief in magically operating forces. In fact, whenever he saw anything happen, man originally believed in a Will as cause, and in personally _willing_ beings operating in the background,—the conception of mechanism was very remote from him.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 694
_Moderation in Diligence._—One must not be anxious to surpass the diligence of one's father—that would make one ill.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 835
We only have created the world _which is of any account to man_!—But it is precisely this knowledge that we lack, and when we get hold of it for a moment we have forgotten it the next: we misunderstand our highest power, we contemplative men, and estimate ourselves at too low a rate,—we are neither as _proud nor as happy_ as we might be.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1079
Almost all Europeans confound themselves with their rôle when they advance in age; they themselves are the victims of their "good acting," they have forgotten how much chance, whim and arbitrariness swayed them when their "calling" was decided—and how many other rôles they _could_ perhaps have played: for it is now too late! Looked at more closely, we see that their characters have actually _evolved_ out of their rôle, nature out of art.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 21
Behind the loftiest estimates of value by which the history of thought has hitherto been governed, misunderstandings of the bodily constitution, either of individuals, classes, or entire races are concealed.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 265
_Plaudite amici, comoedia finita est!_—The thought of the dying Nero: _qualis artifex pereo!_ was also the thought of the dying Augustus: histrionic conceit! histrionic loquacity! And the very counterpart to the dying Socrates!—But Tiberius died silently, that most tortured of all self-torturers,—_he_ was _genuine_ and not a stage-player! What may have passed through his head in the end! Perhaps this: "Life—that is a long death. I am a fool, who shortened the lives of so many!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1327
New things on new the world unfolds me, Time, space with noonday die: Alone thy monstrous eye beholds me, Awful Infinity!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 473
We cannot be sufficiently on our guard against taking a dislike to an artist on account of an occasional, perhaps very unfortunate and presumptuous masquerade; let us not forget that the dear artists are all of them something of actors—and must be so; it would be difficult for them to hold out in the long run without stage-playing.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1301
Like stars and time eterne He liveth now in heights that life forswore, Nor envy's self doth spurn: A lofty flight were't, e'en to see him soar!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 530
In comparison with the importance of this conflict everything else is indifferent; the final question concerning the conditions of life is here raised, and the first attempt is here made to answer it by experiment. How far is truth susceptible of embodiment?—that is the question, that is the experiment.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 850
The Stoic, on the contrary, accustoms himself to swallow stones and vermin, glass-splinters and scorpions, without feeling any disgust: his stomach is meant to become indifferent in the end to all that the accidents of existence cast into it:—he reminds one of the Arabic sect of the Assaua, with which the French became acquainted in Algiers; and like those insensible persons, he also likes well to have an invited public at the exhibition of his insensibility, the very thing the Epicurean willingly dispenses with:—he has of course his "garden"!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1238
We do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because under any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who, like ourselves, love danger, war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery—for every strengthening and elevation of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 475
It is sufficient that his life is right in his own eyes, and maintains its right,—the life which calls to each of us: "Be a man, and do not follow me—but thyself! thyself!" _Our_ life, also ought to maintain its right in our own eyes! We also are to grow and blossom out of ourselves, free and fearless, in innocent selfishness!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1
_I stay to mine house confined, Nor graft my wits on alien stock; And mock at every master mind That never at itself could mock._
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1312
Let them with fell curses shiver, Curl their lip the livelong day! Seek me as they will, forever Helplessly their eyes shall go astray!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1167
We seldom read; we do not read the worse for that—oh, how quickly do we divine how a person has arrived at his thoughts:—whether sitting before an ink-bottle with compressed belly and head bent over the paper: oh, how quickly we are then done with his book!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 219
Well, let him still make many of them, and withdraw himself as much as possible from the world: and that is doubtless the significance of his well-bred rudeness! A prince, on the other hand, is always of more value than his "verse," even when—but what are we about? We gossip, and the whole court believes that we have already been at work and racked our brains: there is no light to be seen earlier than that which burns in our window.—Hark! Was that not the bell? The devil!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 674
_Work._—How close work and the workers now stand even to the most leisurely of us! The royal courtesy in the words: "We are all workers," would have been a cynicism and an indecency even under Louis XIV.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 266
Was _I_ created for the purpose of being a benefactor? I should have given them eternal life: and then I could have _seen them dying_ eternally. I had such good eyes _for that_: _qualis spectator pereo!_" When he seemed once more to regain his powers after a long death-struggle, it was considered advisable to smother him with pillows,—he died a double death.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 271
The fact, however, that these individuals feel and "taste" differently, has usually its origin in a peculiarity of their mode of life, nourishment, or digestion, perhaps in a surplus or deficiency of the inorganic salts in their blood and brain, in short in their _physis_; they have, however, the courage to avow their physical constitution, and to lend an ear even to the most delicate tones of its requirements: their æsthetic and moral judgments are those "most delicate tones" of their _physis_.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 397
And Roman antiquity itself: how violently, and at the same time how naïvely, did it lay its hand on everything excellent and elevated belonging to the older Grecian antiquity! How they translated these writings into the Roman present! How they wiped away intentionally and unconcernedly the wing-dust of the butterfly moment!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 840
But they are skilled and inventive, and always ready in a moment to arrange into the structure of the score the most accidental tone (where the jerk of a finger or a humour brings it about), and to animate the accident with a fine meaning and a soul.—Here is quite a different man: everything that he intends and plans fails with him in the long run.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1050
_The Origin of Religions._—The real inventions of founders of religions are, on the one hand, to establish a definite mode of life and everyday custom, which operates as _disciplina voluntatis_, and at the same time does away with ennui; and on the other hand, to give to that very mode of life an _interpretation_, by virtue of which it appears illumined with the highest value; so that it henceforth becomes a good for which people struggle, and under certain circumstances lay down their lives.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 7
"Joyful Wisdom": that implies the Saturnalia of a spirit which has patiently withstood a long, frightful pressure—patiently, strenuously, impassionately, without submitting, but without hope—and which is now suddenly o'erpowered with hope, the hope of health, the _intoxication_ of convalescence.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1338
Those who come must move as quickly As the wind—we'll have no sickly, Crippled, withered, in our crew; Off with hypocrites and preachers, Proper folk and prosy teachers, Sweep them from our heaven blue.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 750
_For the New Year._—I still live, I still think; I must still live, for I must still think. _Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum._ To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favourite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself to-day, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,—a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 136
But every soil becomes finally exhausted, and the ploughshare of evil must always come once more.—There is at present a fundamentally erroneous theory of morals which is much celebrated, especially in England: according to it the judgments "good" and "evil" are the accumulation of the experiences of that which is "expedient" and "inexpedient"; according to this theory, that which is called good is conservative of the species, what is called evil, however, is detrimental to it.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1234
_Our Slow Periods._—It is thus that artists feel, and all men of "works," the maternal species of men: they always believe at every chapter of their life—a work always makes a chapter—that they have already reached the goal itself; they would always patiently accept death with the feeling: "we are ripe for it." This is not the expression of exhaustion,—but rather that of a certain autumnal sunniness and mildness, which the work itself, the maturing of the work, always leaves behind in its originator. Then the _tempo_ of life slows down—turns thick and flows with honey—into long pauses, into the belief in _the_ long pause....
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1264
So much with respect to brevity; the matter stands worse as regards my ignorance, of which I make no secret to myself. There are hours in which I am ashamed of it; to be sure there are likewise hours in which I am ashamed of this shame. Perhaps we philosophers, all of us, are badly placed at present with regard to knowledge: science is growing, the most learned of us are on the point of discovering that we know too little.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 897
_Doing Harm to Stupidity._—It is certain that the belief in the reprehensibility of egoism, preached with such stubbornness and conviction, has on the whole done harm to egoism (_in favour of the herd-instinct_, as I shall repeat a hundred times!), especially by depriving it of a good conscience, and bidding us seek in it the true source of all misfortune.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 13
——But let us leave Herr Nietzsche; what does it matter to people that Herr Nietzsche has got well again?... A psychologist knows few questions so attractive as those concerning the relations of health to philosophy, and in the case when he himself falls sick, he carries with him all his scientific curiosity into his sickness. For, granting that one is a person, one has necessarily also the philosophy of one's personality, there is, however, an important distinction here.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 434
_Lights and Shades._—Books and writings are different with different thinkers. One writer has collected together in his book all the rays of light which he could quickly plunder and carry home from an illuminating experience; while another gives only the shadows, and the grey and black replicas of that which on the previous day had towered up in his soul.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 268
_Explosive People._—When one considers how ready are the forces of young men for discharge, one does not wonder at seeing them decide so unfastidiously and with so little selection for this or that cause: _that_ which attracts them is the sight of eagerness about any cause, as it were the sight of the burning match—not the cause itself. The more ingenious seducers on that account operate by holding out the prospect of an explosion to such persons, and do not urge their cause by means of reasons; these powder-barrels are not won over by means of reasons!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 992
In the latter case I warrant that nothing comes of it: for the great problems, granting that they let themselves be grasped at all, do not let themselves be _held_ by toads and weaklings: that has ever been their taste—a taste also which they share with all high-spirited women.—How is it that I have not yet met with any one, not even in books, who seems to have stood to morality in this position, as one who knew morality as a problem, and this problem as _his own_ personal need, affliction, pleasure and passion?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1299
Morning came: becalmed, the boat Rested on the purple flood: "What had happened?" every throat Shrieked the question: "was there—Blood?" Naught had happened! On the swell We had slumbered, oh, so well!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 110
"It is worth while to live"—each of them calls out,—"there is something of importance in this life; life has something behind it and under it; take care!" That impulse, which rules equally in the noblest and the ignoblest, the impulse towards the conservation of the species, breaks forth from time to time as reason and passion of spirit; it has then a brilliant train of motives about it, and tries with all its power to make us forget that fundamentally it is just impulse, instinct, folly and baselessness.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 324
In every feeling, in every sense-impression, there is a portion of this old love: and similarly also some kind of fantasy, prejudice, irrationality, ignorance, fear, and whatever else has become mingled and woven into it. There is that mountain! There is that cloud! What is "real" in them? Remove the phantasm and the whole human _element_ therefrom, ye sober ones! Yes, if ye could do _that_!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1268
_Great Healthiness._—We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand, we firstlings of a yet untried future—we require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than any healthiness hitherto.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 544
_The Four Errors._—Man has been reared by his errors: firstly, he saw himself always imperfect; secondly, he attributed to himself imaginary qualities; thirdly, he felt himself in a false position in relation to the animals and nature; fourthly, he always devised new tables of values, and accepted them for a time as eternal and unconditioned, so that at one time this, and at another time that human impulse or state stood first, and was ennobled in consequence. When one has deducted the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted humanity, humaneness, and "human dignity."
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 713
_Obstinacy and Loyalty._—Out of obstinacy he holds fast to a cause of which the questionableness has become obvious,—he calls that, however, his "loyalty."
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 57
"The woman seize, who to thy heart appeals!" Man's motto: woman seizes not, but steals.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 661
_Concerning Eloquence._—What has hitherto had the most convincing eloquence? The rolling of the drum: and as long as kings have this at their command, they will always be the best orators and popular leaders.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 206
It is accordingly, on the one part, the instrumental character in the virtues which is praised when the virtues are praised, and on the other part, the blind, ruling impulse in every virtue, which refuses to let itself be kept within bounds by the general advantage to the individual; in short, what is praised is the unreason in the virtues, in consequence of which the individual allows himself to be transformed into a function of the whole.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1274
And better a simple rustic bagpipe than such weird sounds, such toad-croakings, grave-voices and marmot-pipings, with which you have hitherto regaled us in your wilderness, Mr Anchorite and Musician of the Future! No! Not such tones! But let us strike up something more agreeable and more joyful!"—You would like to have it so, my impatient friends? Well! Who would not willingly accord with your wishes? My bagpipe is waiting, and my voice also—it may sound a little hoarse; take it as it is!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 918
You address yourself with your question to him who _is authorised_ to answer, for I happen to be wiser with regard to this matter than in anything else.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1113
Neither Bahnsen, nor Mainländer, nor even Eduard von Hartmann, give us a reliable grasp of the question whether the pessimism of Schopenhauer (his frightened glance into an undeified world, which has become stupid, blind, deranged and problematic, his _honourable_ fright) was not only an exceptional case among Germans, but a _German_ event: while everything else which stands in the foreground, like our valiant politics and our joyful Jingoism (which decidedly enough regards everything with reference to a principle sufficiently unphilosophical: "_Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles_,"[12] consequently _sub specie speciei_, namely, the German _species_), testifies very plainly to the contrary.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 908
_The Evil Hour._—There has perhaps been an evil hour for every philosopher, in which he thought: What do I matter, if people should not believe my poor arguments!—And then some malicious bird has flown past him and twittered: "What do you matter? What do you matter?"
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 573
How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife,—who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 460
What are the German followers of _Schopenhauer_ still accustomed to receive first of all from their master:—those who, when placed beside his superior culture, must deem themselves sufficiently barbarous to be first of all barbarously fascinated and seduced by him. Is it his hard matter-of-fact sense, his inclination to clearness and rationality, which often makes him appear so English, and so unlike Germans?